When Dreams Die
by K0nflicti0n
Summary: A collection of unrelated one-shots centered around the conclusion of the Afghanistan Storyline. Various outcomes some good, some bad, and some are just so-so for Densi shippers.
1. Chapter 1

Deeks stood there in the living room of Kensi's apartment and felt his very soul go numb. Kensi had just said the one thing to him that he never thought he would hear and his entire would crashed down around him and he suddenly found himself questioning everything he knew.

He knew that years ago Jack had broken her.

He knew that he had helped her heal and move on.

He knew that Sidorov had broken him.

He knew that Kensi pulled him out of the darkness.

He knew that they were more than partners.

He knew that she had been sent to Afghanistan because of them despite what Hetty said.

He knew that Afghanistan had scarred her.

He knew that Jack had broken her, again.

He knew that she wouldn't let him help her.

All of these things he knew, just like he knew that the sky was blue and that the sun would rise in the morning. But now, well now he didn't know what they were as what Kensi had just said to him played over and over in his head.

"_I'm fine Deeks I don't need you hovering over me like I'm made out of glass. This won't break me like Sidorov broke you."_

The two of them stood there in uncomfortable silence each staring at each other. Kensi's face a mask of determination while Deeks stood their stunned, his face fully exposing the pain and betrayl he was feeling because of Kensi.

Deep down Kensi hated herself for doing this to him, herself, and them but after talking to Jack in that cave in Afghanistan when she had been so sure that he was the White Ghost had forcibly pulled emotions towards the man that she had buried so deep down inside herself that, after a time, she had fooled herself into believing she didn't care about Jack one way or the other. And those emotions had completely compromised her thoughts of a future with Deeks and at that moment all she cared about was Jack's safety and wellbeing. Not her own safety, not getting back to her friends and family in LA, not even getting back to Deeks. All that mattered to her in that cave when the Al-Qaeda fighters dragged a beaten and bloody Jack in the cave and threw him on the ground in front of her.

But after that and being rescued Kensi told herself that it would NEVER happen again. That she would never let another person in so close and so deep that she would do something as stupid as intentionally getting captured to talk to them. To let someone else in to her heart that she would throw away all caution and common sense for them. She had already started to with Deeks on the last day they had seen each other before her rescue. He hadn't taken a shot afraid he would lose her, and she had rushed head first into a Armenian gang's headquarters afraid she would lose him. She didn't want to do this to Deeks but she had to.

"Wow….I just can't believe that happened." Deeks finally said as he looked down at the ground and sighed heavily before he looked back at her face, her expression never changing from the absolute determination of her set jaw. "Is this how you really feel? Or are you just trying to run and protect yourself? Because I'm not Jack." Deeks said his voice calm and unsteady and he tried to talk her down from this.

"It is and I know you're not him." Kensi said keeping the façade in place. "But this won't break me. I'm stronger than that."

"Kensi if this…" Deeks took a moment to compose himself and keep his emotions and unshed tears in check. Before Deeks could start talking again Kensi interrupted him.

"I think you should go Deeks." Kensi said still keeping it together and her mask of cold indifference in place.

"Kens please don't push me away." Deeks begged, actually truly begged her his voice shaking. "I know what you're going through ok."

"You don't know anything Deeks."

"Yes I do Kensi. You're afraid, hurt and questioning everything you know about yourself." Deeks said thinking back to what he had been through during his time of seclusion after the Sidorov case. "I know because I've been there. And I won't let you make the same mistakes I did." Deeks said finally unable to hold back a single tear that ran down the side of his face before becoming lost in his scruffy yet trimmed beard. "You don't have to face all this on your own. I'm here for you. I always have and will be."

Seeing Deeks struggling to keep from completely crying in front of her felt like a knife in her stomach to Kensi but she had made up her mind and there was no changing it. She cannot and would not allow herself to become so dependent on someone that their leaving would break her, Kensi Marie Blye refused to put herself in a position to risk going through that again, and she truly hated herself for what she was about to say knowing it would push him away from her. "That's the difference between us. I'm not that weak. I'm stronger and better than you Deeks." Kensi's cold and emotionless tone of voice almost made her flinch at the fact she had said that to him.

Deeks let out a heavy and shaky breath at this and it became harder to hold back the tears. "I…I can't believe you would say that to me." His voice was barely above a whisper but Kensi heard what he said as clearly as if he had shouted it at her. Deeks slowly turned around and walked out of Kensi's apartment and closed to door behind him.

After a few long minutes to make sure that Deeks wasn't waiting on the other side of the door when Kensi collapsed to her knees and finally allowed herself to cry.

Cry for what she had said to him.

Cry for what she had endured in Afghanistan.

Cry for ruining the one good thing in her life.

Cry for the loss she had endured.

Cry for how Deeks was feeling at that moment.

Cry for what Jack had done to her again.

Cry for Deeks.

Cry for herself.


	2. Chapter 2

For what seemed like an eternity Kensi could hear gunfire, muffled shouting in Pashtu and English along with the occasional explosion from outside the complex cave network she was being held it. As time seemed to drag on Kensi could tell that the gun fire was not as intense as it had been but it was also slowly getting closer to her and she desperately hoped that it meant a rescue team was there for her.

"KENSI!"

The sound of Deeks voice was the greatest and worst thing she could have heard at that moment. It meant he had come for her just like she knew he would but it also meant that he knew what she had done.

"DEEKS!" Kensi couldn't keep the fear and hope out of her voice as she called to her partner, best friend and boyfriend.

Suddenly he rounded the corner and the two of them locked eyes. Desperate and sacred blue locked onto terrified and relieved mismatched brown. He rushed towards her and drop down on his knees to hug her and that was when Kensi saw him. Jack came around the corner with a pistol in his hand and pointed it at Deeks back.

"NOO!" Kensi's terrified scream ripped out of her throat as Jack pulled the trigger twice shooting Deeks in the back causing to the LAPD Detective to cry out in pain before he slumped forward. Reacting on instinct alone, all conscious thought thrown aside, Kensi pulled Deeks Berretta from his leg holster and fired at Jack, hitting his directly between the eyes.

The suddenly realization of what she had just done and what she had caused to happen to Deeks fit her full force and she huddled next to Deeks bleeding and unconscious form and cradle his head in her lap. "Oh my god….I'm sorry. I'm so so sorry…..Deeks….Deeks please talk to me."

Just them Sam, Callen and Sabatino rushed into the part of the cave where Kensi was holding Deeks.

"Kensi what happened?" Sam said as she rushed forward and jerked his pack off his back thankful he had the foresight to bring a medic bag with him since he was a fully trained Navy SEAL Medic.

"It's my fault. It's all my fault." Kensi muttered as she cried, her tears slowly falling onto Deeks dirty face. "I killed him….I killed them both. This is all my fault"

Callen and Sam shared a look before Called pulled Kensi away from Deeks while Sam started to work on his younger friend. While this happened Sabatino looked at Jack and spotted the pistol next to his former informants hand and the CIA operative suddenly realized that Jack had been playing him all along.

**1 YEAR LATER**

Kensi walked into her new apartment and her arms loaded with groceries and she kicked the door shut behind her. "Deeks you home?" Kensi asked as she set the bags on the kitchen table and walked further into her apartment, well technically it was hers but they both lived there and had been ever since Deeks had somehow survived the events in Afghanistan and been released from the military hospital in Germany.

"Yeah I'm here Kensi." Came the flat, almost emotionless, voice of Marty Deeks and Kensi gave him a small smile when he came into view. Things between them had changed the past couple of months and they seemed to be finally moving on from what had happened during her rescue. But things could and never will be the same. The wheel chair Deeks was condemned to spend the rest of his life in was evidence enough of that. Of course their strained friendship was another example but Kensi had once made Deeks promise to be patient with her so she was more than willing to do the same for him.

It had been hard on both of them, this past year. Deeks he struggled in coming to grips that his life would never be the same or what he wanted it to be. Before Jack had shot him in the back and the second round had gone through his vest and had shattered his ninth Thoracic Vertebra or T-9 as the Doctor had called it in short had immediately and permanently leaving Deeks a paraplegic. The months following this soul crushing news had send Deeks into a depression so deep and dark that Kensi had found him in his apartment with a loaded and cocked pistol in his hands one day. That had been the turning point for the two of them. Kensi stayed up with Deeks all that night talking and listening and spending a lot of time apologizing for everything she had and hadn't told him.

Every day since that horrible and yet somehow therapeutic night the two of them had been slowly moving back to what they had been before Kensi had been whisked off to Afghanistan and the whole nightmare had begun.

"So what's in the bag Fern?" Deeks asked and for a second it was almost like they were just a guy and a girl hanging out and having fun and Kensi held onto the hope that one day it would be.


	3. Chapter 3

The team has returned from Afghanistan earlier that day. Kensi had home and safe, even though she had been taken to a hospital for overnight observation due to exhaustion and as a precaution. Sam had gone home to his family and Callen. Well no one really knew where Callen was but Sam and Deeks suspected he was spending some time with Joelle. But Deeks, well Deeks had gone home to give Kensi some time since she had asked him to and had assured her that he would be at the hospital in the morning to pick her up and that he would bring doughnuts. So he was in his apartment sitting on his couch mindlessly scratching Monty's head as he tried to process everything that had happened and what he had found out about Kensi's so called disappearance in Afghanistan.

Part of him couldn't fault her for wanting answers. Jack had simply vanished from the face of the earth nine years ago and then suddenly shown up during a classified mission and he fit the profile of the White Ghost. But the rest of his mind couldn't process that she had left her weapons behind and had intentionally gotten herself captured just to talk to Jack and if he had been the White Ghost to try and talk him into turning himself in. Deeks knew that Kensi could be stubborn and no force on earth could change her mind when it was set on something. But didn't she stop to wonder what this would do to him? What it could have done if she had gotten herself killed while Kensi was so focused on talking to a man that had abandoned her and broken her heart all those years ago.

Luckily someone knocked at the door and Deeks slowly stood up and answered it and what he thought had been a blessing to get his mind of Afghanistan was in fact a cruel kick in the nuts from fate as one Hetty Lange, that last person on earth he wanted to see right now, was standing in his door way.

"Good evening Detective." Hetty said as she stood their looking up at him.

"Hetty…Wha…" Deeks paused to clear his throat. "What are you doing here?"

"I merely wanted to see how you were doing consider the event of the past few days." Hetty said very calmly as she stood there with her trade mark stoic face and Deeks finally snapped.

"Oh….Well for a second I thought you were here to play one of your mind games on me that would shine you in a light that didn't make you the person you intentionally withheld information about Kensi's assignment from her." Deeks said in a flat and cold tone that made him sound more like Max Gentry than Marty Deeks.

"And what information do you think that is?" Hetty said still keeping a stoic and calm demeanor.

"Oh just the little part where Kensi's ex-fiancée Jack was the CIA's informant about Al-Qaeda and that Sabatino was his handler." Deeks said and he didn't miss the very miniscule twitch of Hetty's lips. "Of course that would mean you knowingly and willingly sent an operative into a situation where she would be emotionally compromised. But I mean the person who tries to resign every time one of her is killed would never do something like that." Deeks held Hetty's level stare and he tightened his grip on the door to keep from doing something he wouldn't regret but didn't want to do.

"The others may be blindly loyal to you, but I'm not." Deeks said as he stood there glaring at his boss. "I see how you manipulate and twist people. You withhold information under the guise of 'protecting' us or you share it at the last possible second."

"Mr. Deeks if this is about any feelings you have in regards of my trying to keep you from going with Mr. Callen and Mr. Hannah I can assure you." Whatever Hetty had been about to say was cut off when Deeks cut her off, his voice a low and threatening growl.

"Do not lie to me." Deeks said and he took a step forward so that he was towering directly over Hetty. "You have sent me to Dubai and a Navy Aircraft carrier both of which are well outside my jurisdiction as you know so don't even try to stand there and lie to my face. You wanted me on that mission but you felt that you had to try and manipulate me into fighting with you to go."

Deeks stepped back so that he was inside the door way before he started to speak again. "When Granger opens and investigation into how you have handled this situation, and believe me he will. I am going to be right there with him spear heading it. And I wonder what the others will say when I make sure they get a full un-redacted copy of the entire operation that you had access to."

Deeks took a couple of seconds to let Hetty soak everything in and he took several very slow deep breathes to try and calm himself. "My loyalty has been and always will be to Kensi and the Team not you. Why else do you think I went to Romania? It sure as hell wasn't for you." With that Deeks slammed the door in Hetty's face and walked back towards his couch.

Almost as soon as Deeks sat down his cellphone rang and the caller ID showed that it was Kensi. Afraid that something was wrong he instantly answered her call.

"Kensi? Are you ok?"

"Yeah I'm…" Kensi trailed off and Deeks heard her sigh in defeat. "No Deeks I'm not. Can you….Can you come here please?"

"Anything for you Fern."


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: based off the preview for Tuesday's episode.**

Kensi stood there defeated and held her tears at bay but what Hetty has just said to her was the straw the broke the camel's back, so to speak. She had done everything that had been asked of her without complaint. She had talked to Nate. She had taken time off to completely heal. She stood by while the team went out and worked a case. She didn't make a scene when she was benched for her first case back and Nell was sent out with her partner. And she had kept her mouth shut about knowing the full truth of why she was sent to Afghanistan.

"Well you may not think I'm ready to come back but I am. I'm also not ready to trust you or forgive you for playing me like you did Hetty." Kensi said as she turned all of her hurt and despair into anger and directed it at the person most deserving of it. "How could you do that to me?" Kensi demanded as she glared at Hetty who was sitting behind her desk with her damn tea cup and that so called 'patent Hetty look of indifference' on her face.

"I was trying to protect a friend Miss Blye. I'm sure you of all…" Hetty was cut off by Kensi stepping closer to the desk and she slammed her hands on top of it and leaned closer to Hetty's face. Of course Callen and Sam were going to interrupt until Deeks stopped them at the 'entrance' of the bullpen with a firm hand on each man's chest.

"It's a private party boys. And after what Kensi told me Hetty deserves whatever happens." Deeks said flatly and gave each man a pointed look that dared them to challenge him on this.

"What are you talking about Deeks?" Sam said as he looked back and forth from Hetty's office to the younger Detective.

"Hetty knew the truth about Jack and what the CIA wanted to do and she played Kensi." Deeks said and his anger towards the older woman seeped into his voice. This of course shocked Callen and Sam and they backed away from Deeks and watched the scene in Hetty's office.

"You used me Hetty! First you send me to Afghanistan under the lie of being a replacement shooter. Then you lie to me about a leak all because you wanted to save a man who walked out on me without a second thought." Kensi was practically shouting at Hetty know and everyone seemed to be watching but right now Kensi didn't care. "I would expect a stunt like that from Granger but not you."

"Miss Blye I never intended for you to suffer as you did." Hetty said trying to calm her female agent down.

"NEVER INTEDED?" Kensi's voice cracked as she practically screech at her boss. "What the hell did you think was going to happen?! You knew! You absolutely knew that seeing him again after ten years would affect me! Let me guess you had it all planned out right? What was your plan huh? After I see Jack and don't kill him I call you and then you explain everything and I would just fall in line and do whatever you tell me? Or since I had a line to Deeks I would call and tell him and since you probably have his line bugged you would know and could put some other plan into play?" Kensi said as she stood up to her full height and gave a Hetty a glare that caused the woman's façade of indifference to crack

"Miss Blye I think you should remove yourself from my office before you say or do something you regret." Hetty said calmly even though she knew everything that Kensi had just asked her was the truth.

"Or what? You going to send me on another fake mission based on your lies and deception?" Kensi challenged Hetty and waited for the supposed legendary woman to reply. "How can I trust you anymore? How can any of us trust you after this? After years of you lying to us or not telling us pertinent case information until you absolutely has to? You have constantly twisted and manipulated us to suit your own needs and for years we stupidly called it loyalty" For her own part Hetty at least had the decency to look down at her desk in shame and kept her mouth shut as Kensi unloaded on her.

"We followed you to Romania because Callen's loyalty to you. We interfered in a CAI protection detail because of you. Hell we violated so many international laws by breaking into a Russian Embassy because you made us believe that it would be the end of your career." Kensi said in a softer volume but her voice still held all the anger, betrayal and pain in it.

After several very long and extremely tense moments Kensi finally shook her head and moved to walk out of Hetty's office, only to come face to face with Deeks who was smiling at her. "That's my girl." He said as he casually tossed her a wink and stepped to the side to follow Kensi wherever she decided to go. Be it back to the bullpen or away from NCIS and Hetty's altogether. For a brief second his mind flashed back to when the team was getting ready to sneak into the Russian Embassy. _'Where Kensi goes I go. That's how we roll.' _Deeks walked side by side with Kensi as she headed towards her car both of them ignoring the looks of shock and disbelieve on the faces of Sam and Callen.

Callen waited for Deeks and Kensi to leave the building before he walked towards Hetty's. "If you are here to follow up Miss Blye's outburst Mr. Callen you will find I am not in a conversational mood."

"Is it true?" Callen said ignoring Hetty's veiled warning and cut straight to the point. He stood there and watched her as she stood up from her desk and moved further into her office like she was trying to hide. "Its obvious that means yes so all I want to know Hetty is why? You could have sent me or Sam and told us the truth and the outcome would have been the same but the price sure as hell wouldn't have been."

"My team my call." Hetty replied harshly and Callen just stood there in shock that Hetty was so callus about the fact that she had put Kensi in a position that led to her becoming a prisoner of the Taliban and he stood there with his mouth open in shock for a couple of seconds before he set his jaw and his gaze hardened before he stormed out of the office and grabbed his things from the bullpen before he followed Kensi and Deeks in exiting the building. Sam soon followed the rest of his team. A minute later Eric and Nell walked out in similar fashion all of them feeling betrayed as they left the building.


End file.
